Daniel Noah Moses

Director, Educator Programs (Jerusalem)

Contact Daniel

When Daniel was 15, he gave a talk to the Eastern Group Psychotherapy Association about growing up under the threat of nuclear annihilation. Years later he taught at two universities in Yerevan, Armenia, on the other side of what was then the Iron Curtain, and became involved in bringing together Armenian and Azerbaijani university students and young academics.

One day soon after 9/11, outside of the local pantomime theater, a couple who were visiting youth-oriented organizations in regions in conflict told him about Seeds of Peace. Daniel felt compelled to learn more and contacted people at Seeds of Peace after moving to Cambridge, Mass. In 2003, he visited Camp, and in 2004 he worked as a summer Delegation Leader program coordinator. Toward the end of 2006, he became a full-time staff member and moved to Jerusalem.

When he was a Lecturer on Social Studies at Harvard University from 2002-2005, Daniel studied and taught social theory. His work explores the types of education people need in order to be active citizens, to create a better, more peaceful future–one based on respect, on cross-cultural understanding, on dialogue, on creative peaceful responses to the challenges that we face today. Seeds of Peace gives him the opportunity to bring those ideas and theories down to the ground.

Daniel sees his work with Seeds of Peace as progressing naturally from his talk at age 15: “I see us as human beings in a race between our capacity for destruction and our capacity to figure out better ways to live together. Seeds of Peace is a school for leadership, for civic education. It is a test of democracy.” He feels lucky to be doing the work he is doing, leading the life he leads.

Daniel has taught American Studies at Al Quds University in Abu Dis as well as Social Studies at Harvard University. He has been a CEP (Civic Education Project) Fellow and AFP (Academic Fellowship Program) Fellow in History, Anthropology, Political Science and American Studies at Yerevan State University and at Brusov State University in Yerevan, Armenia. In the late 1990s, he lived in a little cabin on Garnet Hill in the Adirondack mountains in upstate New York, worked on his doctoral dissertation, did some editing, and washed dishes at a local hotel restaurant. He spent the 2010-2011 academic year as a Jerusalem Fellow at the Mandel Leadership Institute.

Daniel has a Ph.D. in American History from the University of Rochester and a B.A. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

He published his first book, The Promise of Progress: The Life and Work of Lewis Henry Morgan, in 2009. Although the topic of a pioneering anthropologist might seem removed from his work with Seeds of Peace, there is actually a very close connection.

“Through Seeds of Peace we are creating a different reality—a reality where the bottom line is respect.”